News

Weekend Wrapup: 7/Apr - 13/Apr

Hanabee Entertainment announced that they will be releasing the Blu-ray of Bakemonogatari over two parts starting in August 2013. Unfortunately no further details on this particular release are available at this time. Part 1 on DVD was released at the beginning of April and Part 2 has just started shipping to customers due to a production delay.

The Gold Coast Film Festival have announced their "Cool Japan" slate of events including the Evangelion Art Exhibition, Mamoru Hosada Q & A followed by a screening of Wolf Children and finally the world premiere of Makoto Shinkai's The Garden of Words with the director attending the premiere for a conversation about his body of work. It's a good month to be in Queensland for anime fans!

And of course if you're in Melbourne or Sydney this week, you can catch Mamoru Hosada and Studio Chizu producer Yuchiro Saito for Q & A and screenings of Wolf Children on Monday and Wednesday respectively.

A promotional video for the Danganronpa Kibō no Gakuen to Zetsubō no Kōkōsei The Animation TV series started streaming on youtube this week. The story is based on Spike Chunsoft's PlayStation Portable action-adventure game and follows a group of high school students that are locked inside a school and told the only way to escape is to murder another student and not get caught. However the remaining students must hold a trial with their lives on the line to find out who the killer is. Persona 4 The Animation's Seiji Kishi is directing the series, which will feature the same cast as the game. Makoto Uezu is in charge of series composition and scripts, and Lerche is animating the project. The series will premiere in Japan in July.

And finally in a sad piece of news, Noboru Yamaguchi the author of Zero no Tsukaima (The Familar of Zero) passed away on the 4th of April 2013 after a two year battle with cancer, aged 41. Yamaguchi started writing game scenarios but made his novel debut on the Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko imprint in 2000. The first novel in the Zero no Tsukaima light novel series was published through the MF Bunko J imprint in 2004. The series eventually amassed 20 main volumes, five side story volumes, and four anime seasons. However due to his diagnosis of advanced-stage cancer in 2011 he took time off from writing the series to focus on his health, returned to work in 2012 and had planned to resume writing Zero no Tsukaima at the beginning of 2013 but was unable to due to surgery for his condition. His family held a service on Tuesday the 9th of April, our thoughts are with them.